Rick Perry Takes Small Step Toward Presidential Run

Edging closer to a plunge into the 2016 presidential candidate pool, Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry now has a political committee to help fund candidates he supports.

According to Federal Election Commission documents, Perry filed the necessary paperwork for RickPAC last week, naming as treasurer Stefan Passantino, previous counsel to Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker who ran for president in 2012, Bloomberg News noted.

Perry's national profile has been raised recently by his call to deploy 1,000 National Guard troops to the Texas-Mexico border in response to an unprecedented surge of unaccompanied migrant children crossing into the country illegally.

"He's been talking about the same issues for a number of years, border security, job creation, fiscal responsibility," Miner told The Associated Press.

Former Alaska governor and GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin also used a similar political committee to fund candidates through SarahPAC, the Dallas Morning News noted.

Perry has $4 million left in his state campaign account, some of which can be shifted to the new PAC, the newspaper reported.

The preparation ahead of a possible White House bid echoes a theme Perry has been voicing lately: that he learned something from his disastrous 2012 presidential run.

"You cannot parachute into the process of being vetted for the nomination for the Republican Party without proper preparation. It is a long and arduous task," he told the National Journal.

"If he does" run for president, Miner told Business Insider, "he's going to be prepared."